North Naples entertainment center would include hotel, more dining, brew house

An expansion project on 10 acres next to The Bay House on the Cocohatchee River may bring more than another restaurant to North Naples. Bay House Village is planned to include an Italian bistro, a boutique hotel, and a small brewery and bakery, as well as an outdoor performance area.

Tierney’s Tavern and Claw Bar is the newest addition to The Bay House restaurant, located at 799 Walkerbilt Road, just off of U.S. 41 and the Cocohatchee River, in North Naples.

NORTH NAPLES - The owners of the Bay House Restaurant on the Cocohatchee River have cooked up grander plans for their land.

Plans include a boutique hotel, culinary school and a brew house.

The property, on the west side of U.S. 41 about a half mile north of Immokalee Road, is already home to two restaurants under the same roof, Bay House and Tierney’s Tavern. A 160-room hotel was approved for the nearly 9-acre site years ago, but was never built.

Bay House Campus LLC, whose principals include Edward “Bud” Negley, seeks changes to an old planned unit development, or PUD, to create what’s described as a “coastal resort village.”

The project went before the Collier County Planning Commission on Thursday. After some questions and debate, the commission voted unanimously, 7-0, to recommend approval. County commissioners will make the final decision.

While he asked a lot of questions about the project, Mark Strain, the planning commission’s chairman, said Thursday he liked what he saw.

“The idea of the project itself was to me more appealing than the one that was previously going to be built on the site,” he said after the vote. “They did a good job coming up with a project less intensive than the previous project.”

At the meeting, most of his questions dealt with the proposed commercial uses, outside of the restaurants and hotel, and whether they would be the typical ones for diners and hotels guests.

Development is proposed for roughly two of the six acres that are vacant, with the rest of the land preserved around the project.

The owners want to add a 30-room hotel and up to 4,500 square feet of commercial uses, primarily a culinary school. They want to bump up the allowable restaurant seats from 180 to 400, and to add specialty shops and boat slips for diners and hotel guests.

The hotel would be no taller than 65 feet and would be the tallest building on the site. It would be designed to fit with the Old-Florida style of the Bay House Restaurant, originally built in 1988. Bud and Thelma Negley bought the restaurant in 2007 from the former owners.

The planned unit development, or PUD, zoning on the property has expired. The land originally was rezoned in 1988.

The proposed project would be centered around an outdoor courtyard and plaza, with open space and room for live entertainment.

Planning Commissioner Diane Ebert raised concerns about noise from live entertainment, pointing to a dispute several years ago involving a North Naples sports bar that triggered a new noise control ordinance after residential neighbors complained about loud sounds invading their backyards and homes.

Rich Yovanovich, a Naples land-use attorney representing the Bay House owners, pointed out there’s a considerable distance between the project and its neighbors, saying he expected no big noise issues. No one opposed the project at the meeting.

Ebert, however, raised concerns about adequate parking.

There are plans to expand the existing parking lot, but there will be shared parking among the different buildings, so the owners are seeking a 10 percent reduction in the typical number of spaces required for such a project.

“If we can’t build it, we can’t park it,” Yovanovich said.

At a neighborhood meeting on the project in December, the owners said one of the reasons they bought the land was to prevent a “90-foot” Embassy Suites hotel from being built next to their Bayhouse Restaurant.